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theories and methodologies “I Am Not a Feminist, But . . .”: How Feminism Became the F-Word   TORIL MO , the James B. Duke Profes - sor of iterature, omance Studies, and Theater Studies at Duke University, is the author of Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (Methuen, 1985; 2nd ed., outledge, 2002), Making of an Intellectual Woman (Black - well, 1994), and “What Is a Woman?” and Other Essays (xford UP, 1999). The two lead essays in “What Is a Woman?” were published separately as Sex, Gender, and the Body in 2005 (xford UP). She is also the editor of The Kristeva Reader (Colum - bia UP, 1986) and (Blackwell, 1987). Her most recent book is Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theater, Philosophy (xford UP, 2006). F PMLA INVIUSO REFLECT ON THE STE OF FEINISTTHEORY TODAY, IMUSTE USE THERE I thought to be in trouble because feminism is languishing? Or because there is a problem with theory? Or—as it seems to me—both? eory is a word usually used about work done in the poststructuralist tra - dition. (Luce Irigaray and Michel Foucault are “theory”; Simone de Beauvoir and Ludwig Wittgenstein are not.) e poststructuralist as omas Kuhn would call it, an era in which the old is dying and the new has not yet been born (74–75). e fundamental assump - tions of feminist theory in its various current guises (queer theory, postcolonial feminist theory, transnational feminist theory, psycho - analytic feminist theory, and so on) are still informed by some ver - sion of poststructuralism. No wonder, then, that so much feminist work today produces only tediously predictable lines of argument. - haustion, of domination by a theoretical doxa that no longer has any - thing new to say, is just as prevalent in nonfeminist theory. For more meaningful work to emerge, we shall have to move beyond the old par - adigm. eorists, whether they are feminists or not, need to rethink their most fundamental assumptions about language and meaning, the relation between language and power, language and human commu - Feminist theory is sustained by feminism. Today, however, the future of feminism is in doubt. Since the mid-1990s, I have noticed that most of my students no longer make feminism their central political and personal project. At Duke I occasionally teach an un - dergraduate seminar called Feminist Classics. In the rst session, I ask the students whether they consider themselves to be feminists. e answer is usually no. When I ask them if they are in favor of “Doesn’t this mean that you are feminists aer all?” I ask. e answer is usually, “Oh, well, if that’s all you mean by feminism, then we are .  ] [ ©    \r\f \f\n\t\n \b\b\f   ]  feminists. But we would never call ourselves feminists.” When I ask why they wouldn’t, a long, involved discussion slowly reveals that on my liberal, privileged American campus, young women who would never put up with legal or institutional injustice believe that if they were to call themselves feminists, other people would think that they must be stri - dent, domineering, aggressive, and intolerant and—worst of all—that they must hate men.  Of course, some young women gladly call themselves feminists today. What I nd unset - tling is that there are so few of them at a time when at least some feminist views are shared by most women and men. After all, women who sign up for a course called Feminist Clas - sics are not usually against feminism, yet they are determined to keep the dreaded F-word at arm’s length. We are witnessing the emergence of a whole new generation of women who are careful to preface every gender-related claim that just might come across as unconventional with “I am not a feminist, but. . . .” Conservative Extremists What has caused the stunning disconnect between the idea of freedom, justice, and equality for women and the word feminism ? One reason is certainly the success of the conservative campaign against feminism in the 1990s, when some extremely harsh things were said by conservatives with high media profiles. In 1992 Pat Robertson infamously declared, “e feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encour - ages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcra, destroy capital - ism and become lesbians.”  The same year, Rush Limbaugh did his bit for patriarchy by popularizing the term “feminazis”: I prefer to call the most obnoxious feminists what they really are: feminazis. [A friend of mine] coined the term to describe any female who is intolerant of any point of view that challenges militant feminism. I oen use it to describe women who are obsessed with perpet - uating a modern-day holocaust: abortion. . . . A feminazi is a woman to whom the most important thing in life is seeing to it that as many abortions as possible are performed. Their unspoken reasoning is quite simple. Abortion is the single greatest avenue for militant women to exercise their quest for power and advance their belief that men aren’t necessary.(193) Some of Robertson’s and Limbaugh’s ex - treme claims have disappeared from view. e reference to witchcraft has had no shelf life. Robertson’s accusations of socialism and anti - capitalism have not lived on either, not because socialism has become more acceptable in the United States but because capitalism has en - joyed virtually unchallenged global rule since 1989. e antiabortion rhetoric has not changed much since 1992: such language remains as di - visive as ever. e truly distressing part is that the rest of this demagoguery has become part of the mainstream of American culture. Robertson begins, cleverly, by splitting feminism o
from its historical roots, namely the demand for equal rights for women. is move trades on the fact that in 1992 femi - nists had succeeded in gaining more rights for women than ever before. Because equal rights have become generally accepted, Robertson implies, that demand can no longer define feminism. Instead, feminists are presented as irrational extremists who want far more than equal rights: they hate the family, detest their husbands (if they have any), and go on to be - come lesbians. (Robertson takes for granted that the idea of becoming a lesbian will be distasteful to right-thinking Americans.) By calling feminists child killers, he reinforces the theme of the destruction of the family and casts feminists as demonic destroyers, the polar opposites of the angelic Christian mothers who love their husbands and cherish their children. Feminists, the message is, are full of hate.  ot a eminist, But . . .”: How eminism Became the -Word [ PMLA theories and methodologies Limbaugh’s infamous neologism fore - grounds abortion: feminists are nazis, glee - fully fueling the holocaust of unborn children. But this is not all there is to it. e claim is, aer all, that a “feminazi” is “any female who is intolerant of any point of view that chal - lenges militant feminism.” If we wonder what “militant feminism” is, we learn, at the end of the quotation, that “militant women” are characterized by their “quest for power” and their “belief that men aren’t necessary.” However objectionable they may be, Rob - ertson’s and Limbaugh’s vociferous rantings outline three fundamental ideas about femi - nism that have become virtual commonplaces across the political spectrum today: (1) femi - nists hate men and consider all women inno - cent victims of evil male power; (2) feminists are particularly dogmatic, inexible, intoler - ant, and incapable of questioning their own as - sumptions; and (3) since every sensible person is in favor of equality and justice for women, feminists are a bunch of fanatics, a lunatic fringe, an extremist, power-hungry minority whose ideas do not merit serious assessment. Disenchanted Feminists If such ideas had been promoted only by ex - treme conservatives, they would never have gained widespread acceptance. In the 1990s, however, similar ideas were also voiced by lib - erals and even the le. Notably, a whole range of feminists and ex-feminists, or self-styled feminists wanting to remake feminism in their own image, set up the same clichés as straw targets, the better to claim their own di
er - ence from them. In the 1990s an array of books promoted various “new” or “reformed” kinds of feminism—“equity feminism,” “power fem - inism,” “tough cookie feminism”—and they all appeared to assume that it was necessary to start by attacking feminism in general.  Let us begin with the ideas that feminists hate men and that they take an uncritical view of women. In the 1990s many would- be reformers of feminism spent a lot of time distancing themselves from such ideas, thus reinforcing the thought that most feminists were in fact given to simplistic and melodra - matic thinking. “[M]en are not guilty simply because they are men and women are not beyond reproach simply because they are women,” Katie Roiphe complained in 1994 (xvii).   In the same year, one of America’s leading feminist bashers, Christina Hoff Sommers, went so far as to claim that femi - nists hate men so much that they also hate all the women who refuse to hate men: “no group of women can wage war on men with - out at the same time denigrating the women who respect those men” (256). “Gender femi - nists,” as Sommers calls them, constantly “condescend to, patronize, and pity the be - nighted females who, because they have been ‘socialized’ in the sex/gender system, cannot help wanting the wrong things in life. eir disdain for the hapless victims of patriarchy is rarely acknowledged” (258). In Sacred Cows (1999), the British col - umnist Rosalind Coward, once a well-known feminist theorist, proclaimed that she could no longer consider herself a feminist, since she no longer shared the “fundamental femi - nist convictions that women can never be powerful in relationship to men, and con - versely, that men can never occupy a position of vulnerability” (6). In America the conser - vative Cathy Young declared almost the same thing in a 1999 book symptomatically called Ceasefire! Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality : “By focusing on women’s private grievances, feminism not only promotes a kind of collective feminine narcissism . . . but links itself to the myth of female moral superiority and the demoniza - tion of men” (6). Even an otherwise stalwart feminist such as Susan Faludi was seduced by the idea: “Blaming a cabal of men has taken feminism about as far as it can go,” she wrote in Stied , her 1999 book about the plight of men in America (605). .  ] Toril Moi  theories and methodologies en there is the charge that feminists are a bunch of fanatics, incapable of questioning their own assumptions, intolerant of criticism, hell- bent on suppressing opposition—in short, the Savonarolas of contemporary gender politics. is too was taken up by women with compet - ing projects, not least by Camille Paglia, who in 1992 claimed that “feminism is in deep trouble, that it is now overrun by Moonies or cultists who are desperate for a religion and who, in their claims of absolute truth, are ready to sup - press free thought and free speech” ( Sex 304). e complaint that feminists are a bunch of dogmatic Stalinists is particularly use - ful for people with books to promote. If the author insists that she is writing against an “establishment” ferociously opposed to her views, even tired old thoughts can be pre - sented as new and radical. Perhaps that is why Roiphe’s e Morning Aer also denounced feminism for promoting “[t]he lethal belief that we should not publicly think or analyze or question our assumptions” (xxi). ­ Accord - ing to Roiphe, the feminist thought police had even taken over the media: “On issues like sexual harassment and date rape, there has been one accepted position in the main - stream media recycled and given back to us again and again in slightly di
erent forms,” she complained (xxii). By contrast, her own book is presented as a courageous act of dis - sent from such all-pervasive dogmatism. € If Roiphe thought of herself as a dissenter , Young, who grew up in the Soviet Union, called herself a dissident (10). Alluding to the courageous resistance of the anti-Stalinist dis - sidents of Eastern Europe—the Solzhenitsyns and Sakharovs of the cold-war era—the word casts the feminist basher as a lone voice speak - ing up against the gender gulags constructed by the feminist central committee that runs the country, once perhaps the land of the free but now delivered up to the “radical feminist establishment.” ‚ Given such conspiracy theo - ries, it is sobering to discover that these dissi - dents seem to have su
ered no persecution by the feminist politburo, nor have their books ever been burned on feminazi bonres. e most insidious form of feminist bash - ing subtly promotes the idea that feminists are a lunatic fringe, divorced from the preoc - cupations of ordinary women. Whereas con - servatives will say this openly, in the books by feminists and ex-feminists from the 1990s the same work is done through a series of vague, disparaging references to what “some” or “many” feminists do or think. Such formula - tions have now become ubiquitous, not least in liberal newspapers and magazines. Reviewing Faludi’s Stiffed in 1999, Michiko Kakutani casually remarked, “[is book] eschews the reductive assumptions pur - veyed by many feminists” (B8). Here the word doing the dirty ideological work is “many.” “Some,” “most,” “much,” “often,” “certain,” and so on work in the same way. “A dogged stupidity pervades much feminist writing about sexuality,” Daphne Patai claimed in Heterophobia (178). A young British feminist basher, Natasha Walter, piled up the modi - ers: “the theme that has oen been given most attention by recent feminists is the theme of hostility [toward heterosexuality]. e rejec - tion of heterosexual romance came to domi - nate certain feminist arguments” (110; my italics). Such formulations enable the speaker to avoid having to name the “some,” the “many,” and the “certain” feminists who are said to espouse them. (is has the added ad - vantage of sidestepping the pesky question of evidence.) No need, either, to ask whether any feminists have ever maintained the “reductive assumptions” manufactured for the purpose of presenting the writer as the soul of reason. e subtle little sideswipes against “some” or “many” or “certain” feminists gain ideo - logical power precisely from their vagueness, which acts like a blank screen for readers to project their worst fears on, thus enabling the feminist basher to trade on every negative ste - reotype of feminism in the cultural imagina - tion. e seemingly mild-mannered references ƒ ot a eminist, But . . .”: How eminism Became the -Word [ PMLA theories and methodologies in fact mobilize a set of unspoken, fantasmatic pictures. “Some feminists are reductive.” “Many feminists hate men.” Now it’s up to us to imagine exactly what the reductive man haters do and where they are. In this insidious way, bra-burning lesbians on horseback, castrating bitches eating men for breakfast, or whining victim-feminists crying date rape and sexual harassment without the slightest provocation can easily become the secret backdrop of the apparently innocuous references to “some” or “many” or “certain” feminists. „ A Future for Feminist Theory? I have tried to show that in the 1990s a wave of books and essays by malcontent feminists and ex-feminists, or women with various ideas of how to change feminism, furthered the con - servative feminist-bashing agenda. Some did it consciously; others simply played into anti - feminist hands. e result is the situation we see today: feminism has been turned into the unspeakable F-word, not just among students but in the media too. It is no coincidence that the stream of more or less popular books try - ing to reform feminism has ceased to ow. Nor have I read much about feminism in newspa - pers and magazines lately: it is as if the issue is so dead that it is no longer worth mentioning. Instead I see an everescalating number of ar - ticles on how hard it is for women to combine work and motherhood and how young women today feel free to forget the “strident” or “dog - matic” feminism of their mothers’ generation. Women who in the 1970s might have turned to a feminist analysis of their situation now turn to self-help books, some of which in fact hand out a fair amount of basic, sensible feminist advice but—of course—without ever using the F-word. It is di…cult to avoid the conclusion that the very word feminism has become toxic in large parts of American culture. e complaints of the feminist-bashing women of the 1990s conjure up an image of the feminist as an emotionally unresponsive, rejecting, cold, domineering, and powerful mother gure. My students take the strident, aggressive, man-hating feminist to be an im - age of what they would turn into if they were to become feminists. What they all see, I fear, is a woman who cannot hope to be loved, not so much because she is assumed to be unat - tractive (although there is that too) as because she doesn’t seem to know what love is. is image of feminists and feminism is horrifying and reveals a dire state of a
airs. Clearly academic feminism—feminist criti - cism and feminist theory—has done nothing to improve the general cultural image of fem - inism over the past een years or so. is may not be surprising: in America the divide between academia and the general culture is particularly deep and di…cult to cross. Yet if we—academic feminists—do not take up the challenge, can we be sure that others will? If feminism is to have a future, feminist theory—feminist thought, feminist writ - ing—must be able to show that feminism has wise and useful things to say to women who struggle to cope with everyday problems. We need to show that good feminist writing can make more sense than self-help books when it comes to understanding love and relationships, for example. We need to show that a feminist analysis of women’s lives can make a real dif - ference to those who take it seriously. at is exactly what Simone de Beauvoir’s e Second Sex did in 1949. A magnicent example of what feminist theory can be at its best, e Second Sex ranges with style and wit from history and philosophy through sex, sexuality, and moth - erhood to clothing and makeup. Beauvoir’s book is at once profoundly philosophical and profoundly personal, and because it takes the ordinary and the everyday as the starting point for serious thought, it speaks to ordinary read - ers as well as to professional philosophers. † Beauvoir’s insights remain fundamental to contemporary feminism. But she analyzed the world she lived in. We need to analyze our own world. A Second Sex for our time would have .  ] Toril Moi ‡ theories and methodologies to have a genuinely global range, illuminate everyday life, be readable by academics and nonacademics alike, yet still develop genuinely new ideas about what women’s oppression to - day consists in, so that it can point the way to - ward (further) liberation in every eld of life. It would have to take culture, literature, and the arts as seriously as it does history, philoso - phy, psychology and psychoanalysis, econom - ics, politics, and religion. It would have to deal with personal development, work, education, love, relationships, old age, and death, while fully taking account of all the changes in wom - en’s situation since 1949. Given the amount of research on women that has been done over the past y years, it may no longer be possible for any one person to do all this. Perhaps we should hope for a handful of books to take the place of e Second Sex rather than just one. Beauvoir was committed to political and individual freedom and to serious philosoph - ical exploration of women’s everyday life. To me, these remain exemplary commitments for a feminist, and poststructuralism has not been overly friendly toward them. In 1949, moreover, Beauvoir was a member of an in - spiring new intellectual movement. As she was writing e Second Sex , she felt the ex - citement of deploying new and powerful ideas to generate insights in every field. Women coming to intellectual maturity at the tail end of poststructuralism have to struggle free of the legacy of an intellectual tradition that has been fully explored. We won’t get a fresh and freshly convincing analysis of women’s situa - tion until we nd new theoretical paradigms. Perhaps the new feminist voices we all need to hear are getting ready to speak right now. OTES 1. Feminist Classics always has men in it too. ey usually have different reasons for not wanting to call themselves feminists, which I shall not discuss here. 2. Schwartz and Cooper. This quotation quickly turned up on T-shirts. Today it is all over the Internet. (When I Googled the exact wording of the whole quota - tion, I got almost ten thousand hits.) Feminist bashing is of course not new. Perhaps it all began over two hundred years ago when Horace Walpole called Mary Wollstone - cra a “hyena in petticoats” (Janes 299). 3. “Equity feminism” is Christina Hoff Sommer’s creation, “power feminism” comes from Naomi Wolf, “tough cookie feminism” is one of Camille Paglia’s many creative formulations for her inimitable brand of thought ( Vamps and Tramps xii). 4. e original book was published in 1993. My quo - tations come from the paperback, which was published in 1994, with a new introduction. 5. Not surprisingly, in her next book Paglia praised e Morning Aer as evidence of her own growing inu - ence ( Vamps and Tramps xvi). 6. “Intolerance of dissent” is the refrain of Roiphe’s introduction to the paperback edition, published in 1994 (xiii–xxiii). 7. On the back cover of Young’s Ceasere! , Sommers thoughtfully provides an enemy, proclaiming the book a “brilliantly reasoned indictment of the radical feminist establishment.” Sommers, incidentally, is the only other feminist singled out for praise alongside Roiphe by Ca - mille Paglia ( Vamps and Tramps xvi). 8. The phrase “lesbians on horseback” comes from Stephanie eobald (85), who has it from the British col - umnist Julie Burchill. 9. ese are themes I explore in Sex, Gender and the Body . ORKSITED Beauvoir, Simone de. e Second Sex . Trans. H. M. Parsh - ley. New York: Vintage, 1989. Trans. of Le deuxième sexe . 2 vols. Paris: Gallimard, 1949. Coward, Rosalind. Sacred Cows: Is Feminism Relevant to the New Millennium? London: Harper, 1999. Faludi, Susan. Stied: e Betrayal of the American Man . New York: Morrow, 1999. Janes, R. M. “On the Reception of Mary Wollstonecra’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman .” A Vindica - tion of the Rights of Woman . By Mary Wollstonecra. Ed. Carol Poston. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1988. 297–307. Kakutani, Michiko. “What Has Happened to Men? An Author Tries to Answer.” Rev. of Stied , by Susan Fa - ludi. New York Times 28 Sept. 1991: B1+. Kuhn, omas S. e Structure of Scientic Revolutions . 3rd ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996. Limbaugh, Rush. e Way ings Ought to Be . New York: Pocket, 1992. ˆ‰ ot a eminist, But . . .”: How eminism Became the -Word [ PMLA theories and methodologies Moi, Toril. Sex, Gender and the Body: e Student Edition of What Is a Woman? Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Paglia, Camille. Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays . New York: Vintage, 1992. ———. Vamps and Tramps: New Essays . New York: Vin - tage, 1994. Patai, Daphne. Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism . Lanham: Rowman, 1998. Roiphe, Katie. e Morning Aer: Sex, Fear, and Femi - nism . Boston: Little, 1994. Schwartz, Maralee, and Kenneth J. Cooper. “Equal Rights Initiative in Iowa Attacked.” Washington Post 23 Aug. 1992: A15. Sommers, Christina Hoff. Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women . New York: Simon, 1994. eobald, Stephanie. “Lesbians on Horseback.” On the Move: Feminism for a New Generation . Ed. Natasha Walter. London: Virago, 1999. 85–103. Walter, Natasha. e New Feminism . 1998. London: Vi - rago, 1999. Wolf, Naomi. Fire with Fire: e New Female Power and How to Use It . New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1993. Young, Cathy. Ceasefire! Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality . New York: Free, 1999. .  ] Toril Moi ˆ theories and methodologies